I first heard of Vik before arriving in Gaza. Vik had just been injured by IOF water cannoning which shattered the windows of the fishing boat he was accompanying. Vik had some injuries from the shattered glass.

When I met Vik he was nothing but humble and humour. A compassionate man, living to do good and do anything for Palestinian justice. Others knew him better and longer, and told me of Vik’s arrests by the IOF, deportation, and other interesting stories. But above all, what shone, aside from his intelligible English and random Italian curses, was his humanism.

Vik’s blog, Guerilla Radio, gave voice to Palestinians who have strong voices but are denied the microphone.

During the Israeli war on Gaza, we all worked together, riding in ambulances, documenting the martyred and the wounded, the vast majority (over 83%) civilian. Vik was always on the phone, Italian media taking his words and printing them for the public to see.

Aside from the loss of a compassionate, caring human, activist, and friend, I am saddened by the group that did this. Surely they knew Vik was with them, for them. But in every society, including my own, there are extremists, people who act with misguided guidance.

Vik was there, among the war casualties, among the on-going martyrs unspoken in the corporate media, celebrating Palestines beauty and culture, dancing Dabke at my wedding celebration.

He was there to joke with us, to counsel us, to smoke shisha by the sea…He wrote the truth, spoke the truth, stayed human.

This is the month for Palestinians to remember their Nakba, or “catastrophe”, in which more than 700,000 women, men and children were pushed off their land and rendered homeless refugees by the Zionist attacks before, during and after the founding of Israel in 1948.

Isdud, a farming community to the north of Gaza’s current border, was ethnically cleansed, in the months after the expulsions began in May 1948. It was one of over 530 villages razed and destroyed after the residents were forced out by Zionist attacks.

After three nights of Israeli air bombardment, more than 5,000 Palestinian residents here were forcibly expelled from their houses and land. Most resettled in what are now overcrowded refugee camps in Gaza.

“Most of the houses have been destroyed; the rubble is covered with grasses and thorns,” wrote Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi.

At a Gaza City Nakba commemoration displaying the clothes, agricultural equipment and tools of Palestinian daily life, Mohammed Tooman, 83, wearing the traditional robes of Isdud, spoke of village life and their forced expulsion.

“We were farmers and grew grains, fruits and had orange and palm orchards. Isdud had a large market every week and people from neighbouring towns came to buy from us.

“With every sunrise, I expect to return to my home in Isdud. And as the sun sets, I tell my grandchildren about our home and village, to which they will return.”

Hammad Awadallah, 70, also from Isdud, keeps this call for justice alive. “My right is passed down to my sons and daughters and their children. We will not forget our villages and our history. They are instilled in our memories.”

Since 1948 the United Nations (UN) has reiterated over 130 times its Resolution 194 calling for Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The 1974 UN Resolution 3236 specified “the inalienable right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.”

Roughly another four kilometres east of Isdud, East Sawafir (al Sawafir al Sharqiyya) was ethnically cleansed of its thousand residents on May 18, 1948. The village had a mosque and shared a school with two other villages.

“No village houses remain on the site,” wrote Khalidi. “But some traces of the former village are still present on the surrounding lands.”

Abu Fouad was born in 1930, before East Sawafir was intentionally disappeared. After the forced expulsion from his village, he ended up in the tents which eventually became the tiny, poorly-built, maze-like concrete houses of a Palestinian refugee camp.

“My father was a farmer and had 35 dunums (a dunam is 1,000 square metres) of land, on which he grew wheat and vegetables. We had 50 sheep which I used to herd.”

East Sawafir shared a primary school with two neighbouring villages. “We didn’t go to school after 4th grade because there were no secondary schools in our area,” says Abu Fouad. “We only learned to write our name and studied religion a little, but nothing much more.”

Life was simple as were the houses. “Ours had two rooms,” Abu Fouad says, “but no bathroom: we would bathe outside. Even though we didn’t have money or the conveniences of today, we lived well, people were happy.”

Like most Palestinians, Abu Fouad has relatives spilled around the world from whom he is cut off.

“We have family in Jerusalem, Libya and Hebron. We don’t know them. And I haven’t seen or spoken with one of my brothers since he left for Libya decades ago.”

His wife Umm Fouad comes from the same East Sawafir community. Born in 1948, she was just four months old when her family fled.

“My father was a tailor and grandfather a farmer. He grew cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and other vegetables. We hand-washed our clothes and cooked food over a fire or a kerosene stove (baboor) and baked bread in the wood oven (taboon).”

Although just an infant at the time of expulsion, Umm Fouad has been told the history of her family’s land and home so much that she has internalised it as her own memory.

“We fled because the Israelis were firing on us. My grandmother couldn’t walk properly, so in the panic we had to leave her there. She must have died in the house. We left walking, carrying only a few possessions as we didn’t have cart or horse. It was days of walking until we reached Gaza.”

And dispossessions continue. Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 24,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, says the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD).

“I still come back to the house to work a small piece of my land that is 700 metres from the border. But even then I get shot at by the Israelis,” says Jaber Abu Rjila. His home and poultry farm east of Khan Younis lie just under 500 metres from the border. They were destroyed in a May 2008 Israeli invasion into the farming community. Soon after, the family fled, renting a house to escape the regular Israeli attacks.

On May 18, Israeli soldiers set land near Rjila’s fields on fire, burning the wheat crops of the Abu Tabbash family. The Nakba is not just about memory.

]]>12503Gaza’s virtual connection to the rest of the worldhttps://palsolidarity.org/2010/05/gazas-virtual-connection-to-the-rest-of-the-world/
Sun, 23 May 2010 08:06:22 +0000http://palsolidarity.org/?p=12484Electronic Intifada

23 May 2010

Eva Bartlett

The Gazan skyline reveals a particular need to link with the outside world. (Emad Badwan/IPS)

GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) – “I’ve learned most of what I know about photo editing and graphic design via the Internet,” says Emad, 27-year-old filmmaker and editor. In Gaza, this sort of thing has become usual in a different way.

“This program isn’t available here,” he says, smiling triumphantly as he finishes downloading the latest edition of an advanced video editing program. “Even if it was, I can’t afford to pay $600 for it, not even if I worked for two months. But I need this for my work, so I looked for a free online version.”

Isolated under a siege which began shortly after Hamas was elected in 2006 and heightened severely in mid-2007, Palestinians in Gaza have suffered the effects of such alienation in all aspects of their lives. The economy has been destroyed both by the prolonged and choking siege and the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Gaza, leaving unemployment hovering near 60 percent.

Aside from denying Palestinians in Gaza an astonishing number of the most basic of daily items, as well as material vitally needed for reconstruction or in the health sector or for schools and universities, the siege is a psychological attack and strangulation which has pronounced affects on Palestinians dreams, hopes and daily realities.

“I’ve tried on various occasions to leave Gaza, for workshops abroad and for study,” says 24-year-old Majed. “But even when I’ve secured visas and invitations, the closed Israeli and Egyptian borders have prevented me from leaving.”

Likewise, Hatem has held a number of scholarships to study in the US and Europe, all of which have been lost to the whims of the Israeli and Egyptian officials imposing the siege.

Defiant despite the worst of obstacles, Palestinians continue to seek ways to educate themselves, as well as to feel connected to the outside world.

“The Internet is the most helpful thing right now,” says Emad. “For example, I’d like to study lighting in university, but it isn’t possible. Those type of programs, or anything on filmmaking and photography, are not available in Gaza. And since I cannot leave, I look online.”

Artists and musicians, as well as independent filmmakers, have virtually no market in Gaza for their work.

“Because of the siege and closed borders, the Internet is vital for promoting my work,” says Emad. “Someone anywhere in the world can see my photography, designs or videos and contact me about them. But for me, the most important is constantly sending a message about the reality of Palestine, whether it’s about the lives of children, or about the war, or the hardships under siege.”

Mahdi Zanoon keeps busy volunteering and filming with an organization in Gaza’s northern Beit Hanoun. But when not working, he too longs for contact with the world outside. “I chat with friends in other parts of Palestine and in countries abroad,” he says. “It is a small means of escape, when we always feel choked.”

Denied the opportunity to leave and visit family and relatives outside of Gaza, the Internet fulfills another vital role. “It’s too expensive to call people outside Gaza, but using Skype or a messenger program, I can keep in touch with friends and family abroad.”

Activists and educational groups also make the most of the Internet and technology. Satellite-enabled video conferences and Skype hook-ups allow university students in Gaza to connect with those in the occupied West Bank and with universities outside of Gaza working to break the siege on education.

The annual Bilin conference on 21 April this year included a satellite hook-up with academics and activists in Gaza, as well as residents in one of the hardest hit areas during the Israeli war on Gaza.

Ezbet Abed Rabbo, which had 372 homes destroyed, 333 partially damaged and suffered some of the worst human rights violations and war crimes at the hands of Israeli soldiers, played host to the conference, enabling the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem activists to show their solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The conference also enabled continued dialogue between Gaza and the West Bank, something that the siege and Israeli policies works to severe.

But for many in Gaza, the Internet and television are less political and academic, and more about killing time. In a Strip where time is the only thing in abundance, lack of work and leisure activities leads more people to surf the net or watch television.

Turkish dramas have gained a wide audience in Gaza. “I like to see something different. Their clothes, their customs, their surroundings,” says Umm Fadi. “When the power cuts, I get so anxious because I don’t want to miss an episode of the drama.”

The programs provide a means of escaping the daily reality of life in Gaza, where many feel tomorrow will be no different from today or yesterday. “Nothing changes, every day is the same,” says Mohammed. “There’s no work, no freedom, nothing to do.”

“You know, we watch television for the news, but also see how life is in other countries,” says Mahfouz Kabariti. “My kids see ‘normal’ life in other countries and ask me why our lives are so different.

“Can you imagine, this is the 21st century and my kids have never seen a real train. They live by the sea and only dream of sailing.”

GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) – “Why are you rushing? Isn’t it nicer like this?” Mohammed Omer, oud (an oud is similar to a lute) teacher at the Gaza Music School, asks his student. Omer takes the oud and demonstrates, playing the song slowly, gracefully, with the ornamentations that are key to Arab music.

Mohammed Abu Suffiya, the 10-year-old student, has only been studying for six months but has already learned to read music and play a working rendition of a well-known song by Lebanese singer Fairouz.

Glancing only now and then at the sheet music, he begins to play again, more slowly and with more expression, his teacher accompanying him on a tabla (hand drum).

Mohammed Omer, 28, is one of five teachers at the Gaza Music School in Tel al-Howa, Gaza City. Formerly in the al-Quds hospital Red Crescent complex, the school moved to its current location not far from the hospital after the complex was bombed and burned during the 23-day Israeli assault on Gaza. A piano and at least two ouds were destroyed with the school premises.

The school opened about six months before the Gaza assault in December 2008-January 2009 as a response to the demand at the Qattan Center for the Child in Gaza City.

School director Ibrahim Najjar holds a music degree from Cairo. Mohammed Omer studied oud in Iraq. The piano and violin teachers are from Russia.

“We are open in the evenings, five days a week. Students receive one-on-one classes, 40 minutes each lesson,” says Najjar. “We teach the solfege system of note reading, because it is internationally understood.”

Currently, students can learn the violin, guitar, oud, qanoon (a zither-like instrument) and the piano. “We’d love to teach other instruments, but we lack professional teachers aside from the five we have.”

Fifty students now study at the institute, half in their first year, and half in their second, continuing from their start in the al-Quds complex.

Elena, the Russian piano teacher, works with 11-year-old Hada. “All my students are girls this year, but I hope next year will have some boys studying piano,” Elena says.

Tala, 11, is a second-year student, having studied piano in her first year. She sits with a qanoon before her, slowly plucking her way through a song, starting to find the techniques necessary to make music.

She has studied qanoon for a year now. “I chose it because it has a beautiful, unique sound. It is difficult, and not many people play it, so I wanted to learn it,” she says.

“When I play, I forget any problems and just think about the music.”

“All children like music, it’s the language of peace,” says Ibrahim Najjar. “And it’s good for the mind, body and our daily lives.”

At the moment, students are all from the Gaza City region. But this is more a question of logistics than preference.

But because transportation from regions outside of Gaza City is too expensive for most families, the students are local.

Najjar hopes to change this. “I’m trying to arrange a bus, so that students can come from any region of Gaza, if they have potential.”

“Even if they’ve never played an instrument, they can have the chance to learn. We test their ear: can they hear and hum a melody? And we test their rhythm: can they replicate a rhythm?”

Mahmoud Kohail, eight, has studied the qanoon for just under a year, but took first prize in a Palestine-wide competition in oriental music for ages seven to 11.

“Everyone asked me how many years he had been studying,” laughs Najjar. “When I told them it had been only 80 hours, they couldn’t believe me.”

Emad Kohail, Mahmoud’s father, is an accomplished oud player, and his mother a talented singer.

Also a doctor of mental health and alternative medicine, Emad Kohail explains how music has helped his son.

“Mahmoud suffered the same post-traumatic stress disorder [(PTSD)] that nearly all Gaza’s children suffer, as well as an attention deficit disorder,” he says.

“Music has made an immense difference in Mahmoud’s behavior. It has been a therapy for his PTSD and as a means of teaching him to focus.”

Ibrahim Najjar agrees that music is therapy, and constructive for children’s learning and mental health.

“There is a big difference in the students’ behavior from when they first came. Now, they are calmer, and listen and respect each other. I teach them this, but also to behave like this in all aspects of their lives.”

On a sunny Friday morning in Gaza’s south, east of Khan Younis, Abu Mohammed strums his oud for an appreciative audience: the children have been traumatized by a May 2008 Israeli invasion which destroyed their home and farm.

“They were terrified, we were in the house as Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroyed the land and our chicken coop attached to our house. My children were so frightened by the shooting and explosions,” says Laila Abu Dagga.

The family has since vacated their house, 470 meters from the Green Line boundary, instead renting a house half a kilometer away. But on this Friday morning, they revisit their home, with friends, clapping and dancing to Abu Mohammed’s music. “Music really helps people improve their mental health,” says Abu Mohammed.

The oud player says he had to struggle to learn music.

“My father was very religious and looked down on music, thought it was a waste of time. He used to keep me from playing, but I’d learn in private. He didn’t understand, but music can be resistance, my oud can be a weapon against the Israeli occupation.”

With a stigma against musicians still prevalent in Gaza, projects like the music school, and individuals like Abu Mohammed are vital to the society.

Learning on his own, Abu Mohammed in 2004 won the Gold prize in a competition sponsored by Palestine Television. His winning composition featured the story of a pregnant Palestinian woman who died waiting at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank for the Israeli soldiers to allow her to pass and continue to hospital.

He plays his own works, set to the words of poets, and highlights themes of the Israeli occupation, siege, and the war on Gaza. Political, traditional, therapeutic, Abu Mohammed’s music meets various needs.

Hamdan's knee after being shot by Israeli forces while gathering scrap metal

Said Abdel Aziz Hamdan, 15, went for his first time to Gaza’s northern border area to try gathering scrap metal for re-sale. Although an area lined with Israeli military towers and notorious for Israeli soldier shooting, shelling and abductions of Palestinian workers and farmers, Hamdan did not feel he would be in danger.

“People go there everyday to gather bits of metal and concrete. The Israelis see us and know we are just working, it’s normal,” he said from his hospital bed in Jabaliya’s Kamal Adwan hospital.

Hamdan set out from home shortly after 10 am Friday, going with his younger brother Suleiman, 13, to earn whatever shekels they could. From a family of 7 brothers and 5 sisters and whose father is unemployed, Said Hamdan had no other options for employment.

“My friends go every Friday, so I decided to join them today, to try this work.”

The bullet which struck Said shortly before 2pm as he was leaving the area came from the direction of a nearby Israeli military tower. It pierced his upper left thigh, entering from outer thigh and exiting from inner thigh, leaving a 2 cm exit wound, his doctor said.

“The Israelis fired without warning,” said Hamdan.

“There were many people there, working like me,” he said of the area, a former Israeli settlement known as ‘Dugit’.

Still in high school, Hamdan is training as a mechanic and hopes to find work to supplement his family’s income. “My father used to work in Israel, but he’s been unemployed for years now.”

Said Hamdan’s injury is neither new nor surprising. Every week, Israeli soldiers shoot upon and abduct Palestinian workers in the border regions of Gaza.

Some of the recent IOF aggressions against Palestinians in the border regions include:

-Naji Abu Reeda, 35, shot in the leg on the morning of 25 March as he worked collecting rubble 500 metres from the border for re-sale.

Those venturing to the border regions to gather rubble and steel do so as a result of the siege on Gaza which, along with Israel’s 23 day winter war on Gaza, has decimated Gaza’s economy, including 95 percent of Gaza’s factories and businesses, according to the United Nations. Additionally, these recycled construction materials are vital in Gaza where the Israeli-led, internationally-complicit, siege bans all but under 40 items from entering.

The barbaric siege prevents vitally needed construction materials from entering Gaza, where over 6,400 houses were destroyed or severely damaged in the Israeli war on Gaza, and nearly 53,000 sustained lesser damages. Hospitals and medical centres, schools, kindergartens and mosques are among the other buildings destroyed and damaged during the Israeli war on Gaza.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza, only 0.05 percent of the monthly average prior to the siege had been allowed into Gaza as of December 2009.

They come by the hundreds every day to sand dunes and rubble sites to sift for pebbles, stones and sand that can be used in making concrete blocks. They lean into trash bins across the Strip, and wade through piles of rubbish scavenging for plastics, metals, and any bits worth reselling.

They venture dangerously close to the border fence to unlock metal and steel rods from their demolished home heaps. They are Gaza’s recyclers, and in a Strip where unemployment hovers at nearly 50 percent and poverty soars over 80 percent, environmental considerations are far from their minds. They do this work out of necessity.

Yousef, 14, leads two of his younger brothers in their daily hunt for concrete materials off the highway between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.

“We live in Khan Younis and it takes about 30 minutes to get to this site. But we stop anywhere along the road to look for gravel,” he says, stooping to sort rocks. One of his brothers works in Gaza’s tunnels, another has no work. “I’ve got five sisters, too. There’re 12 of us altogether, and my dad has no work.”

Like many unemployed men in Gaza, Yousef’s father used to work in Israel, until Israeli authorities closed Gaza’s borders. Now, he infrequently works day labour for farmers when there is work, but the pay is low.

Moatassan, Yousef’s three-year-old brother, piles pebbles onto the donkey cart, adding his bit to the family income. “Each cartful is worth about 30 shekels (eight dollars),” Yousef says. “We can usually do two carts a day.”

He is characteristic of Palestine’s children who become adults all too quickly. “Al hamdilliah, thank God, this is at least some sort of work,” he says, never breaking from his rock sorting.

A few hundred metres south along Salah el-Din road, the soft sand hills are crowded with the day’s sorters. Children jab shovels into the sand, pile it into buckets, and laboriously haul the buckets to piles a hundred metres off. They do this every day, morning to night.

Older women sit, makeshift sieves dancing as they sift the finer sand, likewise piling it into buckets to be carried away. Abu Majed, a man in his late forties, works with some of his children digging and bucketing sand.

“I worked as a fisherman all my life. But after the Israelis started attacking us more on the sea, and prevented us from going out very far, there was no longer any point in fishing,” he says.

Under the Oslo accords, Palestinian fishermen should be allowed to fish 20 miles off the coast. Israeli gunboats impose a limit of three miles, firing and shelling on fishermen who venture near or beyond three miles, or even on those nearer in.

“We were sardine fishers, but sardines aren’t found next to the coast, you need to go out beyond six miles. What could I do? I have six children to feed. So I started selling sand and gravel. This is hard work and I only earn around 30 shekels a day. But it’s better than starving.”

Ninety-five percent of Gaza’s industry has been decimated by the combination of the siege – imposed shortly after Hamas was elected in 2006, and tightened in June 2007 – and by Israel’s winter 2008-2009 war on Gaza which destroyed or badly damaged 700 factories and businesses, according to Oxfam.

The nearly 4,000 industrial establishments which formerly operated in Gaza have ground to a halt, leaving a mere 5 percent of factories operating, reports the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), noting that even those operating do so at greatly reduced levels of activity.

The combination of siege and the war on Gaza led to a loss of roughly 120,000 private sector jobs since mid 2007, according to OCHA.

And while the full closure of Gaza’s borders and trade has become most severe in the last three years, Israeli journalist Amira Hass points out that Israel’s debilitating policy of Gaza border closures has been in place since the 1990s.

But to those scavenging off the roads and in garbage dumps, it’s the stark contrast between just years ago when there was some work and now, when there is none, that is the hardest.

Near central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, just off the main north-south road, five men work what used to be a 12-man job at the scrap metal yard.

“We work from 7 am to 7 pm, and another shift takes over,” says Mahmoud. “We earn at most 50 shekels a day. It’s not enough – we have to take taxis here and home and are trying to meet the expenses of our families.”

Prior to the siege, working from 7 am to 4 pm the workers would earn 100 shekels. The metal was exported, sold outside of Gaza. Now, the factory owner waits, collecting metal in heaping piles, waiting for the time when exporting will be possible again.

“We didn’t all work this job before. Some of us studied in university, some worked construction. We all had jobs or lives better than this,” says Mahmoud.

“But we take the work because there’s no other option. We need to live.”

The steel, gravel, sand and metals Gaza’s poorest now scavenge for a pittance of shekels used to come from Israel, at a cheaper rate than what it currently sells for.

According to OCHA, one ton of cement now costs 3,400 shekels versus the 350 shekels it cost prior June 2007.

Whereas construction materials made up over 50 percent of pre-siege imports, according to the Palestine Trade Centre, since Israel’s war on Gaza, only 0.05 percent of the monthly average prior to the siege had been allowed into Gaza as of December 2009. The siege prevents cement, piping, wood, glass, steel and metals, as well as all but less than 40 items into Gaza.

Even if there were enough cement, 20 of 29 concrete factories were damaged in the Israeli war on Gaza, along with 39 other factories related to construction, reports OCHA. With over 6,400 houses destroyed or severely damaged, and nearly 53,000 with lesser damages, the need for these materials is great. And the wait has been long. Displaced families continue to rent apartments most cannot afford to pay for, crowd into relatives overcrowded homes, or live in tents.

At a concrete factory using recycled rubble, hand-gathered gravel, and tunnel-imported cement, the prices are high and still at a loss.

“One cement block costs four shekels now. Before, it was one shekel,” says factory owner Abu Fadi. “Now we wait for one week for a pile of pebbles and rocks like this to reprocess into concrete blocks,” he gestures at the mound ready for processing.

“The cement we buy from Egypt is over three times as expensive since it comes through the tunnels,” he explains. “It’s absurd. Now, we pay 150 shekels per ton of gravel. But before, we used to pay people to take the gravel away.”

Gravel and cement quality, availability and prices are just some of the issues.

“Gaza has an electricity crisis now. So that means we can only run our machinery when the power is on. But there are usually cuts for eight hours a day. Twelve hours now. So we sit and wait.”

Down the lane is a small steel recycling shop. Donkey carts unload the rubble-scavenged steel and workers clamp and hammer it straight.

“It’s ironic. The demolished homes create a demand for building material. But at the same time, they provide the rubble and iron needed to re-build,” says Abu Fadi.

Ahmad, 23, quit university to work in the tunnels, bringing roughly 100 shekels a day when there is money. Some days his tunnel brings cement. This day’s cargo is gravel from Egypt. “A 50 kg bag of gravel will sell for 100 shekels in Gaza,” he says.

Sameh finished university and worked for two years before he became unemployed. “I joined my friends finally, gathering rocks and rubble near the border. We can sell one ton for 150 shekels, that’s 50 shekels per person. It’s hard, backbreaking work. I’m sore all over.”

Workers in the border regions suffer more than the strain of their efforts. Since mid 2007, at least 33 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli soldiers, including 11 children, as of August 2009. Over 61 civilians, including 13 children, have been injured, according to OCHA.

Shahin Abu Ajuwa (17) still has shrapnel in both his legs after an Israeli tank fired a dart bomb at him and his cousin Saber, 15, as they collected rocks and scrap metal east of Jabaliya, at the end of November 2009.

“We were over 600 metres from the border. We were in an area where many people go daily to collect metal and stones,” Ajuwa said. “The Israelis always see people working here, it’s normal.”

One of eight sons, Ajuwa has five sisters, and the 10 or 20 shekels he might have earned that day would have gone towards his family income.

“The doctors removed one from my leg, but there are still six more left.”

Some are abducted and detained by Israeli soldiers. Every week, news reports announce more rubble workers have been abducted by Israeli soldiers from within Gaza, including children, many of whom were beyond the 300 metres designated by Israel as “off-limits” to Palestinians.

The Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights reports such an incident on Feb. 10, when Israeli soldiers fired on youths gathering rubble 350 metres from the border. One of the three workers, 17-year-old Mohammed Suboh, was injured in the hand and chest by Israeli gunfire. All three were taken to Israeli detention. Suboh was released four days later.

“If we had money we’d get married right away,” says Samir*, 23. He has found his bride, but not the money to hold the wedding.

The Israeli siege imposed shortly after Hamas’s election in early 2006 has ruled out marriage for many. Palestinians traditionally marry young, between 18 and 25, but more and more now pass their mid-twenties single.

With unemployment levels above 45 percent, and the price of most goods doubled or more, living, and marrying, are becoming unaffordable.

Worsening living conditions under the siege are changing relationship patterns. While salaried work has traditionally been the man’s role, many women have been adding to the family’s income – or have sometimes been the sole provider – by selling hand-stitched embroidery.

Groups such as Oxfam, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, and other social organisations have provided some of the poorest women with small gardens, sheep, rabbits or chickens to tend for food and for income.

Palestinian women have long been respected for their strength in raising families under the severe conditions imposed by the occupation and by Israeli military activities. That people still marry and have families is inspiring.

Samir is close to giving up. “I work many jobs in order to bring enough money to marry,” he says. “But everything is so expensive in Gaza, and salaries have become lower. It can’t work like this.”

Sameh, 26, had decided he could not marry even before he was laid off work. “I just don’t want to get married in these circumstances. The money I earn in one month isn’t enough even for me alone. If I get married, I would want to be able to buy things for my children. I never want to tell my child ‘I can’t buy you a bicycle, let alone new shoes’.”

Sameh’s elder brothers, their wives and children, and his parents all share the same house, with separate apartments. The severity of the siege means that salaries that covered the needs of the extended family three years back are now stretched. Everyone looks out for additional work.

Mohammed is another in that long list now resigned to staying single. “I used to want to get married, but now I don’t consider it. Since I began working a few years ago, my salary has been low, just 600 dollars. At least 100 dollars goes towards phone costs. A few months ago, my pay was cut by 100 dollars. And now I am out of work.”

It is difficult to manage for himself, never mind a partner. “Years ago, if I wanted a pair of jeans, they were 60 shekels,” he says. “Now, it’s double.

“My parents used to pressure me to get married,” says Mohammed. “But now, because we aren’t a rich family, and they know how expensive weddings and living are, they’ve stopped nagging me. But eventually, I do want to get married, to live with a family. I think I’d like married life.”

The means to marry are disappearing; the pressure is not. Dima’s father died a year ago, unable to leave Gaza for treatment. Now 19, Dima will soon marry.

“There’s so much pressure on us, her extended family,” says Sameh, Dima’s uncle. “Because her father is dead, we all need to help with the wedding costs and also take on the role of her father.”

Dima is fortunate to have the opportunity to get married. Many unwed women feel even more pressure than men, particularly those above 25.

Some women have turned to matchmakers. Many do so without the knowledge of their family. Yet, other women are defying the tradition of marrying young, preferring instead to finish their education and begin their careers.

“I want to work for some years, establish myself, before I think of getting married,” says Noor, a woman in her mid-twenties. “I thought about it last year, but knew I was too young, and wanted to lead my own life first.”

Noor isn’t alone in expressing these sentiments. Leila, in her early twenties, agrees. “Why would I marry now? The situation in Gaza is too difficult,” she says, echoing also the views of her male bachelor peers.

For many who do wish to wed, the foremost reason that marriage is unthinkable is the sheer cost of the wedding. By conservative estimates, average weddings cost 10,000 to 15,000 dollars. This pays for hiring a hall, the parade to the hall, jewellery, clothes for the bride, and housing and furniture for the new couple.

Expenses like jewellery and the parade may seem frivolous, but these are long-held traditions. “Even if I wanted to cut out the wedding parade, I couldn’t,” says Sameh. “It is like an announcement to the neighbours and family that we are married now.” In a region where dating before marriage is not common, heralding the legality of a relationship is important.

“The cheapest wedding hall and party is around 3,000 dollars,” says Samir. “And we can’t hold a joint wedding with a friend; there are too many guests in each party. And besides, women need privacy so they can celebrate unveiled. The husband of one bride cannot be present at the party of another bride.”

Rafiq, 51, says he has finally saved almost enough to marry, after working the last eight years as watchman at an apartment building. “I work six days a week, from early morning till late at night. I still need to save another 3,000 dollars before I can have my wedding.”

Even for those already married, life in Gaza isn’t easy. Saber Zaneen, from Beit Hanoun, is married with two children. He remembers times when life was better.

“Families used to go their farmland to tend trees and enjoy nature. But this has nearly completely stopped, because Israeli soldiers along the border shoot at us, and because they’ve bulldozed and bombed all the trees and crops that once grew here. Now my wife and I just stay home with our kids. Watch television, visit friends and family. There’s nothing else to do.”

Mahfouz Kabariti, 51, is married with six children. He doesn’t feel the pinch of the Israeli siege nearly so much as the majority of Gaza’s Palestinians. But he still notices the difference.

“Before, we were under a different sort of siege: the occupation. But even with the Israeli soldiers and settlers here, it was still better than now, because we could move more freely than now. We could visit Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Egypt.

“Now, it’s like we are just parts of a machine. It’s a daily routine, we don’t expect yesterday to be different from tomorrow. It is hard for people, especially children, to have any hope. We go to school or work, eat, sleep, watch television, read…That’s it, this is our life.”

It’s pouring rain. Farmers are collectively breathing relief, finally able to begin working on their parched land, land deprived water because Israeli bombing, tanks and bulldozers destroyed virtually all of the wells, cisterns, and rain-water collectors of farms in the border regions.

I’m breathing many sighs of relief, because the rain is fresh, brings life, brings a needed feeling of growth…

But the family of Saleh Abu Leila, with their 14 family members crammed into 1.5 tents (half the tent is occupied by a refrigerator) of poor-quality, torn fabric will be sighing with much less relief, as water seeps in through rips and breaks in the tent, floods the door, gradually streams into the tent entrance.

Their focus will be on keeping warm, particularly for their infant just over a month old, and dry, added to the daily worries about where the money for the next tine of baby milk will come from.

We’ve come to interview them, share their struggle with those outside Palestine, re-affirm that for this family and so many others absolutely nothing has changed nor improved.

They have no income, are not refugees –and thus do not receive any UN aide–and have young children to raise.

I try to imagine myself as a child, living in these conditions long term –nearly a year now –and without sufficient nutrition. I try to image having children of my own subjected to this. That is the hardest, most painful thought, one any parent could identify with: the desire to provide for, nourish and bring joy to one’s children.

Despite their great poverty, their unavoidable Palestinian hospitality overrides and I am coerced into sampling some soup: a mixture of cooked greens and lentils, very tasty. I’m acutely aware that this must stretch to feed all their children and the parents themselves, but my refusal and excuse that I’ve eaten is met with insistence that I join them or leave them insulted.

Arafia, Saleh’s wife, mentions that the baby milk she is mixing to heat in a pot of water costs about 50 shekels (nearly $15) every 5 days, and that they must go to the city to buy it.

Together, Arafia and Saleh spend 600 shekels per month for their kidney and diabets medications.

They speak of their situation, which is alone hard enough, living crammed in substandard tents for a year but when considering what they had, it is unbearable.

“I worked in Israel for 14 years. I speak Hebrew fluently, traveled all over Israel for work. I earned good money and we lived well.”

He reminds us that there are many, many others like him, who used to earn a living in Israel but who now are cut off from any source of income, the borders closed and the economy in Gaza shattered by the massacre and the siege.

For many survivors of the last Israeli war on Gaza, time has not healed their wounds, physical or emotional.

Halil Amal Samouni, 10, still suffers vision problems in her right eye. The shrapnel remaining in her head causes her constant pain and she is unable to concentrate at school.

Her concentration is broken, also, by memories of her martyred father and younger brother, both of whom she saw shot dead at close range by Israeli soldiers during the 2008-2009 winter war on Gaza.

The name Samouni has become well known for the high number of martyrs in the extended family, and for the brutality with which many victims were killed, the Israeli army’s prevention of medical access to the injured, and the thorough and systematic destruction of homes, farms, and civilian infrastructure in the Zeitoun district in eastern Gaza, and all throughout Gaza.

In the wake of Israeli tanks, bulldozers, warplanes and Apache helicopters, the once tree-laden area was left a muddy pitch of rutted earth and tree stumps. Chicken farms were destroyed, along with plastic greenhouses, farm equipment, water piping, and the tens of homes, agricultural buildings and the local mosque.

Many of the remaining houses were taken as military positions, sniper holes bored through walls, soldiers’ excrement, clothing, spent ammunition and food provisions were routinely left among the trashed belongings of the house. Hate graffiti was found throughout homes in the Samouni neighborhood and all over Gaza.

Most horrifying was the targeted shooting of the family — including children — and the deliberate shelling of homes they had been forced into by Israeli soldiers.

Amal Samouni was among the least fortunate of survivors.

When Israeli soldiers came to her home early on 4 January, they shot her father Atiyeh dead at close range, then fired continuously into the room full of family members. Amal’s younger brother Ahmed, 4, was seriously injured by the shooting. Denied medical care, he died the following morning, roughly ten hours after Israeli soldiers prevented medical rescuers from entering the area.

“They killed my dad and my brother. They destroyed our house,” Amal says simply. She has told her story to journalists many times. “But it hasn’t done any good, nothing has changed.”

Zeinat Samouni, Amal’s widowed mother, shows the single room her family of eight are crammed into, cracked asbestos tiling covering the roof.

“The roof leaks. We put plastic jugs on the floor to catch the water,” she says. “And because we can’t buy cooking gas, we cook over a fire instead.”

Aside from their physical discomfort, it is memories of the massacre and fear of a new attack that trouble them.

“I was terrified he would choke,” she says, gesturing to a child she holds. “He was only a few weeks old at the time.”

She recounts the trauma of having another child die in her arms, seeing him shelved in an overcrowded mortuary freezer, and all the while desperately wondering whether Amal was still alive.

“Even now, I’m still so afraid for my children, afraid that another war will come. The UAVs (unmanned drones) are always over us, and often at night the helicopters come.”

In northern Gaza’s Ezbet Beit Hanoun, families and friends of the Abd al-Dayem and Abu Jerrad families gather on 26 December, holding a candlelight vigil in remembrance of their sons, wives and husbands killed during a series of Israeli flechette (dart-bomb) attacks a year back.

The first to be killed in that area of Gaza by the razor-sharp nails was medic Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, on the morning of 4 January. Along with other medics, Abd al-Dayem had been on duty in the Attatra region, in Gaza’s north, retrieving wounded and martyred. As the medics loaded the ambulance, Israeli soldiers fired a flechette shell at the clearly marked vehicle, spreading thousands of darts at high velocity. Abd al-Dayem died an agonizing death, his internal organs and lungs shredded by the darts.

Khalid Abu Saada, a medic and the driver of the ambulance, testified to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: “The shell directly hit the ambulance and 10 civilians, including the two paramedics, were injured.”

The following morning, the Abd al-Dayem family and friends gathered at a funeral tent erected for Arafa. Israeli tanks again fired flechette shells, striking the gathering multiple times, killing five at the tent, one down the road, and injuring at least 25.

“The pain is still fresh, I still can’t move on since my sons’ murders,” said Sabbah Abd al-Dayem, mother of two martyrs in their twenties.

Jamal Abd al-Dayem, father of the young men, recalls: “It was clearly a mourning house, on the road, open and visible. Immediately after the first strike, the Israelis fired again. I lost two sons. One of them was newly married, his wife eight months pregnant.”

Said Abd al-Dayem, 29, died of dart injuries to his head one day later in hospital. Nafez Abd al-Dayem, 23, died immediately from the darts to his head.

Nahez Abd al-Dayem, 25, survived but retains two darts in his abdomen, one in his chest, with only the dart in his leg removed. Islam Abd al-Dayem, 16, a cousin, died after three days in hospital from the darts to his neck. Arafat Abd al-Dayem, 15, a cousin, died instantly.

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and B’Tselem, among others, have criticized Israel’s use of flechette bombs in civilian areas in densely populated Gaza, where the darts have a “wide kill radius,” and indiscriminately target civilians.

Wafa Abu Jerrad, who was 21 and pregnant, lived down the street from the mourning tents. She was with her husband Muhammad, their two children, and relatives outside their house when Israeli soldiers fired the dart bombs.

Muhammad Abu Jerrad was stepping into the doorway, their two-year-old son Khalil in his arms, when the bomb hit. Wafa dropped to ground, struck by flechettes in the head, chest and back. She was killed instantly.

Sitting outside his family’s tent in the Attatra region, Saleh Abu Leila says, “Everything I worked for is gone.”

Since their two-story home was destroyed by Israeli soldiers during the war on Gaza, Abu Leila and 13 other family members have crowded into two small tents. During the summer, they sweltered in stifling heat. Now that winter is setting in, they are struggling to keep warm and dry.

Over 21,000 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged during the 23 days of Israeli attacks throughout Gaza that finally ended 18 January.

Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli authorities continue to block entry to cement and other necessary building materials. Glass, along with wood, piping and many other items, is considered potentially dangerous by Israeli authorities. The bomb-blasted windows of homes and buildings remain un-repaired one year later; the luckier families making due with plastic sheeting.

A small portion of Gaza’s 1.5 million people can afford to buy the overpriced, poor-quality cement smuggled in through the tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt. For those hardest hit, however, this is out of reach.

Hundreds of families, like the Attars, still remain in substandard shelters, insufficient for winter cold and rains.

Many Gazans do not welcome the New Year, they fear what it will bring.

Home damaged during the winter 2008/2009 Israeli massacre of Gaza. Waiting for repairs.

The anniversary of the first day of Israel’s massacre of Gaza last winter passed yesterday. Palestinians still locked in Gaza couldn’t avoid thinking about that hell, recalling to others where they were when the first strikes hit…what they did, what they thought, what they saw and smelled and heard.

At 11 am yesterday I’m in a meeting, but all of us are aware of the significance of the hour, particularly as the minutes pass towards 11:25, when the slaughter began.

Later, I visit a family in the north, their mother killed, shot at close range by an Israeli soldier as she carried a white cloth, trying to lead the family out of their home. Not an isolated story. How are they? Grim, alive without joy, no expectations except that things will get worse. Mahmoud is a young engineer but is jobless. They are not refugess and so don’t receive UN hand-outs. A charitable association gives them flour, oil, sugar and tea every 40 days. Meat, fish? Impossible.

Near their house, the scent of orange blossoms, though most of their trees were razed by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The Moawiyya school across the street still gapes with its missile holes in the side and in the roof. The neighbouring houses still gape with jagged, absent walls.

Mahmoud lives just 20 m up the street from the tent encampment in this area of Attatra, where the Attar family are still braving the cold, still rendered homeless, still out of the world’s news and off the radar, still uncompensated, and among those more subject to bouts of fear when the Israeli warplanes and drones fly over. They are able to hear shooting from the northern and eastern borders, as well as the regular Israeli navy shooting and shelling of fishermen on Palestinian waters.

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This morning, at 11:55 I re-notice the roar of F-16s… maybe they were always there and I was again oblivious to them…Sometimes it is a casual, drawn-out, rolling roar, as the warplanes troll the skies. Sometimes it’s a rush, sudden, invasive, low, near.

That’s this one, the one that grabs my attention and makes me wonder: perhaps they just delayed it by a day and a half hour.

There is little rational thinking when such planes swarm above. The notion “Israel couldn’t do it again so soon, not with the world commemorating the massacre” dissapates into “why not, Israel has committed massacres in the past, the world has frowned, and it’s buseinss as usual into the next onslaught.”

But it’s not only me, with just a year’s experience here. Of all, I should be more inclined to think, “no way, not now,” when I know that nearly 1500 people from over 40 countries and all walks of life are on their way to Gaza, and another 500 in the Viva Palestina lifeline are hunger-striking till Egypt relents its complicit denial of entry…when I know that the Palestinian-led BDS movement has surged into vitality, and that strong Jewish voices around the world are condeming Israel’s occupations and war crimes.

12:06

But it’s fighter planes like the one currently above us that mocks rationality and screams “it’s here, this time it’s an attack.”

If I, a passport-holding international who can basically leave when I decide and who hasn’t lost a house, a child, a loved one, hasn’t been burned to the bone by white phosphorous, hasn’t had my livelihood and memories destroyed…if I feel this, imagine how those who suffered worst are feeling, the younger children for whom it was their first massacre, or the older children who know in too great detail the sounds of the different war machines.